Misc

President Trump’s Defense secretary, James Mattis, believes climate change is a national security threat, according to congressional testimony highlighted by ProPublica on Tuesday.
According to a report, Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believes in climate change and recognizes it as a threat. The statement came in unpublished written testimony associated with Mattis’s confirmation hearing.
Source: The Hill

Less than a month after complaining that reporters “make up stories and make up sources,” President Donald Trump is now depending on favorable coverage that use an anonymous source — namely, himself.
Prior to his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, the president used a private meeting with national news anchors to speak off the record as a “senior administration official,” according to BuzzFeed. “There’s got to be a coming together,” Trump told the reporters on background, specifically on issues like immigration reform. Some of his comments were later put back on the record on Tuesday eve...

In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday morning, Trump said the mission “was started before I got here.”
He noted that the operation was something his generals “were looking at for a long time doing.”
“This was something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do,” Trump said. “ And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected.”
“And they lost Ryan,” Trump continued.
Source: Washington Post

Donald Trump has accused former president Barack Obama and his “people” of organizing the demonstrations that have roiled city streets, airports and town halls during the first weeks of his presidency.
In an interview with Fox and Friends, which aired on Tuesday morning in the US, the president also suggested Obama and his allies were behind the leaks of classified information from the White House to the press.
Source: The Guardian

Since January 2015, the FBI has also arrested more anti-immigrant American citizens plotting violent attacks on Muslims within the U.S. than it has refugees, or former refugees, from any banned country. As we wrote about here, here and here, in October 2016, three white men from Kansas were charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. According to the graphic complaint, the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant men planned to attack a mosque in the area. The men progressed quickly with their plot, amassing firearms and explosives. The targets were people from Somalia, who ironically, ...

President Trump met Tuesday morning with a group of sheriffs from the National Sheriffs Association, a group that consists of more than 3,000 sheriffs from around the country. And to this sworn group of law enforcement veterans, with reporters taking notes, he again repeated a falsehood about the murder rate in America.
Trump told the sheriffs, “the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years.” He blamed the news media for not publicizing this development, then added, “But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, 45 to 47 years.”
The country’s murder rat...

Amid signs that Donald Trump began his presidency with the same chaotic operation that marked his campaign, a report has claimed he was not even aware he was elevating Steve Bannon to a senior security post when he signed one of several executive orders.
Since Mr Trump’s inauguration on January 20, reports have emerged of a White House West Wing marked by confusion and unpreparedness - alongside intense turf battles being fought by his top officials.
Source: Independent